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But Zeus- ordering all, governor, guardian and disposer,
possessor for ever of the kingly soul and the kingly intellect,
bringing all into being by his providence, and presiding over all
things as they come, administering all under plan and system,
unfolding the periods of the kosmos, many of which stand already
accomplished- would it not seem inevitable that, in this
multiplicity of concern, Zeus should have memory of all the
periods, their number and their differing qualities? Contriving
the future, co-ordinating, calculating for what is to be, must he
not surely be the chief of all in remembering, as he is chief in
producing?
Even this matter of Zeus' memory of the kosmic periods is
difficult; it is a question of their being numbered, and of his
knowledge of their number. A determined number would mean that
the All had a beginning in time [which is not so]; if the periods
are unlimited, Zeus cannot know the number of his works.
The answer is that he will know all to be one thing existing in
virtue of one life for ever: it is in this sense that the All is
unlimited, and thus Zeus' knowledge of it will not be as of
something seen from outside but as of something embraced in true
knowledge, for this unlimited thing is an eternal indweller
within himself- or, to be more accurate, eternally follows upon
him- and is seen by an indwelling knowledge; Zeus knows his own
unlimited life, and, in that knowledge knows the activity that
flows from him to the kosmos; but he knows it in its unity not in
its process.
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